In water and wastewater analysis, sum parameters are of distinguished importance. In regulatory monitoring as well as used as design criteria in planning wastewater treatment plants, pollution often is expressed by merging individual substances into respective substance groups. Compared to the determination of individual substances, substance groups can be determined reliably by sum parameters with much less effort. Within this thesis, the process principles of the respective sum parameters and their use in the water and wastewater analysis are described and explained in the first part.
An important but also controversial sum parameter is the AOX - adsorbable organically bound halogens. Its importance as sewage parameter is caused by its relevance to regulatory law and tax law. Among other things, the AOX is controversial because it had been originally developed for purposes other than wastewater analysis. The AOX originally was a monitoring parameter for drinking water. As a wastewater parameter it is used to detect a substance group which is undesirable in wastewater and related to be hazardous to waters - such as persistence, bioaccumulability and toxicity (PBT).
In the second part, AOX was used as a representative example within laboratory experiments. The interrelations between substance parameters and the PBT properties of selected substances causing ecotoxicological effects were investigated. In connection with the determination and fixing of minimum requirements for the discharge of wastewater, the results were assessed and discussed.